Priestess Grove: Blossoming on the Spiral Path

A Priestess is a woman who acts as a conduit between the Heavenly and the Earthly realms, as our world shifts and turns and re-awakens it's ties to the Divine Feminine the role of the Priestess is once again coming out into the light of day. The Priestess Grove is a sanctuary of Priestess tools, ideas and inspiration to encourage the growth and re-emergence of Goddess consciousness back into the third dimensional world.

Why we honour the Goddess in our Home.

When I became a priestess nobody in the family that I had grown up in were surprised to hear about it. For time immemorial I have been considered the eccentric, the odd duck, the one that just refused to fit in in our sleepy bible belt of a town that I grew up in, and consequentially moved back to four years ago.

When my long-haired artistic actor/carpenter Spanish husband and I moved to my hometown, toting with us a spirited wheat haired sprite of a child (she once belted out 'We All Come From the Goddess' at 15 months in the back of a Catholic Easter mass....how we ended up there is a whole other story), my parents were elated to be having their grand-daughter coming to live in such close proximity to them. For the first 19 month's of my daughter's life we had lived a five hour flight away. In their enthusiasm to welcome us back to a much different living environment than the hippie big-city we had just left, they endeavoured to remain as inclusive and open minded with our norm, which to them of course was anything but the norm.

With an unprecedented grace my father agreed to keep the tv screen off while my daughter was awake and we were staying with them for the summer as we accrued work for my husband and our own place, because at that time we were completely screen free and I had not yet entered the flexibility of motherhood that having a second child initiated me into. They steered clear of the many plastic toys that they wanted to buy her and opted for the natural materials we preferred and they even kept their subject matter at the table child friendly, a welcome treat that I had missed out on as a child. In hindsight I had quite a few ideals that would not have been easy to live with if they were not also your own ideals, however, for the sake of enjoying their grand-daughter being home they were ridiculously accommodating.

So, I took note the one day that my father furrowed his eyebrows after my daughter and I had finished blessing our meal and asked me, "why is everything 'she'? Why is it Goddess instead of God? Why do you change the pronouns in the nursery rhymes you recite and the stories that you read? Why do you need to push 'she' so hard?"

My father is a dutiful son of the patriarchy and there was simply no way for me to convey to him the fallacy of his question, I had to "push she so hard," because there was no leading role for 'she' in the society of my daughter's life, not in the traditional sense, and while my husband and I agreed that as she grew older we would introduce the concept of a non-gendered One Source of energy that lived within all beings, her introduction to the Divine would utilize feminine pronouns instead of masculine, this would have been so even if she had been born a he (for now she has indicated to us that she does indeed identify as being female).

How I did respond to my father was like this : "Dad, as she grows and goes out into the world everything will be 'he', she will be introduced to a God the Father and she will hear stories about boys that do great things and girls that are kind and caring to those exciting adventurous boys, while we make up her whole world I'd like to counter the heavy influence of masculine leadership in our culture and instill in her a knowing of her own feminine power. This is not to say that women are more powerful than (why is it only the patriarchs that need this explained to them?) rather is it a grand balancing out, she is about to be flooded by a world I cannot control."

We left it at that, however I could see how irked he was and I had a moment where I remembered that despite his patience, my father was very much still the chauvinistic product of the patriarchy that he was when I was growing up, this only ensured I dug even deeper into my commitment to bring the face of God as a woman into our house all the more.

And now, at the age of five, I am beginning to see how prophetic that statement has proven to be. Much to my chagrin (and quite a bit of pride) my daughter announced to me last year that she had decided she did not want to be homeschooled for kindergarten (as was the mutually agreed upon plan) but that she wanted to go to a school, to make a lot of friends and to play a lot. After a lot of praying, meditating and seeking spiritual counsel I came to the conclusion that it was best to follow the lead of her Inner Being and be a support for how her soul chooses to unfold her journey. We decided upon a school that was directly on the other of our backyard fence and within five minutes walking distance.....the catch? It is a Catholic school. So, once again, after a lot of praying and meditating and seeking spiritual counsel we decided on this school, for it's proximity and thanks largely to my upbringing. I had gone to a Catholic school and had been raised with extremely open metaphysics at home, I grew up loving Jesus and knowing that I could do all things that He had done and knowing that God loved me eternally and that hell was a metaphor and that the church had 'got it wrong', I did believe the home I grew up in and so a lot of what was indoctrinated within the school system bounced right off of me.

So, before I knew it, the very mindful and heavy introduction to school began and I had a huge adjustment as all of my old wounds around institutions came to the surface to be transmuted. After two weeks, however, we had found our groove, I had decided to make the system work for us, we made sure that our daughter knew that she was welcomed to go for full days or half days and that if she ever changes her mind about school, the first of every month is an opportunity for her to let us know so that her father and I can discuss if we will pull her and bring her home to be home schooled. In the meantime she loves going, is much more popular than I ever was and we make sure that she isn't in class for the mornings there are church services. Of course, she still comes home with tales of God and how He created the earth and of course she is still read stories that are heavy on the boys adventures and the girls behaviour, and I thank Goddess for the foundation that we have created and for the overt conversations we intentionally have.

My daughter is well aware of the fact that God is actually Goddess, that Goddess is One expressed as many and is both Mother and Father, she is aware of the fact that Jesus is the son of God just like she is the daughter of Goddess and that He knew Goddess in His heart so well that He was able to do great things that she may be able to as well one day if she continues to meditate and keep her chakras open. When she plays with her silks in the living room I hear her now say things like "Little (her baby sister) you are Jesus, Daddy is God, I'm the rainbow Goddess and Mommy is the rain Goddess," for her all sacred terms are one and the words that were used to wound so many people have zero effect on her. One day, when she is older, I will teach her about the burning times and she will be made aware of all that was done in the name of this God that the church created. The first day that she was kept home because of class church services her father took her on a walk and explained to her that hell was a state that existed within one's heart when they can't feel or find the Goddess and that we must walk through the pain and feel it and then get to the other side where we connect with Her again. He explained that on this side of the world we hear a lot about God the Father and Jesus but that if we had been born elsewhere she would be hearing about Shakti and Shiva or Lakshmi and that all people worship differently.

School is opening her horizons in the vein of worship in a much quicker manner than I had ever imagined, and I'm sure there are many Goddess loving mothers and fathers that would have handled this situation differently in their own homes, I know that for me I am balancing the fine act of following my own Inner Being and not imposing my views or values onto the Inner Being of my children. I personally have had a tendency to push too hard on my side of the coin in the past and am intentionally choosing to be much more open and surrendered than I have been in the past simply because I don't know where my children are meant to thrive as they grow and expand, I only know that I am here to support them as they do and that I can and will re-evaluate as life continues to unfold, for now, it's kindergarten!

I see now how beneficial it has been to inundate my girls with a Goddess and to sing nursery rhymes like "Patty-cake" that include a baker's woman instead of a baker's man, now that one of my children is out in the world I feel as though all of the Goddess and feminine pronoun words I can muster are rushing in to ensure that her sense of self as an extension of Source energy as a young woman remains strong and true.

And this is why I am grateful that my children have known Source as Goddess first and why I am forever grateful to have a household where the he's are turned to she's and the she's are turned to he's in so many stories and rhymes, because regardless of what she is fed 'out there', in here she knows that she is a powerful extension of Source energy just as she is, and whether she identified as a girl or a boy she would be learning that the Power is the same regardless of the human vessel that is channeled through.

One day, in the not so distant future, I envision a society that mirrors the one in the Fifth Sacred Thing, where gender bias and power and authority are a thing of the past and I hope that the steps we are taking in our home, as small as they can seem on a grand scale, are steps that help move us forward and get us there within the next seven generations to come.

Candise is an ordained Priestess, a professional psychic channel, writer, workshop, ceremony and ritual facilitator and an energy worker.
She is a Priestess of Grace who works with the Butterfly Spirit which is her totem.
Candise practices a faith that she has named 'Lunar Mysticism'. In mysticism we acknowledge One Source and recognize all else as human hypnotism. In Lunar spirituality we embrace duality and marry it, forming non-duality. It is through the practice of Lunar Mysticism that Candise utilizes ritual as a tool to see beyond the hypnotic suggestion of this realm.
Priestess' have practiced the art of marrying the energies from this Earth realm and the Higher realms together for many moons now.
Mystics endeavour to find Source behind the suggestions of illusion.
Thus the Lunar Mystic approach to life is to marry the Truth of perfection with the human experience. This is the path that Candise Priestess', the Spiral Path of Grace, the path of the Feminine Mystic.
Her services are offered both in person and via distance, one on one or in group settings, depending on what it is that you are in need of. You can find her services at : priestessofgrace.wordpress.com